The Adventurer's Son(41)
The Osa’s forests also hide poachers, illegal miners, drug smugglers, and murderers. At the north end of the peninsula in Sierpe, a small cowboy town in a mangrove estuary, two tons of cocaine were found in an underground cellar in 2016. In 2011, two North American women in their fifties were found murdered near Puerto Jiménez in separate incidents. In 2009, two Austrians in their sixties went missing from their blood-spattered house in Dos Brazos, a twenty-minute drive from Puerto Jiménez. Even Olaf Wessberg—the ex-pat Swede considered the father of Corcovado National Park—was murdered in the jungle near Puerto Jiménez in 1975.
WHEN ROMAN STEPPED off the long-distance bus into Puerto Jiménez’s sweltering heat on the afternoon of July 8, he knew none of this history of violence lurking just beyond the tourist billboards and hostels. But the Osa’s confluence of wild nature and dangerous people is not rare in Central America; nor was it new to Roman.
Sometime after four that afternoon, he checked into a place that his Lonely Planet guidebook called Cabinas the Corner Hostel. He wrote his name and passport number in the register.
On July 9, from an Internet café a block from his hostel, Roman emailed a friend: Currently on the Osa Peninsula on the Pacific, right next to Panama. There’s a national park I am going to sneak into and bushwhack around in. Practice for the Darien. He went on to say that he might cut his trip short. He needed to buy his ticket home, where he’d need an apartment, a car, a job, and pay for another semester of school. Costa Rica is burning through my cash. Otherwise, I wanted to see Colombia and climb some mountains and go trekking. I think South America is going to wait for another trip.
The same day, he sent detailed plans to Peggy and me in two emails. The first at 9: 02 AM said he was in Puerto Jiménez shopping for food to head into Corcovado. Five months before Roman arrived on the Osa, in February 2014, Corcovado National Park had enacted new regulations that required that all visitors who enter the park have a licensed guide. Roman had spent less than twelve hundred dollars a month since January. Even if he could fit a guide into his tight budget, he neither needed nor wanted one: Anyway, Im heading in offtrail tomorrow, just west of the Los Patos to Sirena trail. Its about 20km, then Ill hit the coast and follow the Madrigal trail out at night. I am going to try to follow the Rio David south, then hop over to the Rio Claro. . . . I anticipate the highlands to be slow and wet.
The highlands—where a maze of poacher and peccary trails crisscross a summit plateau cut by shallow canyons called Las Quebraditas—are indeed slow and wet. The plateau, officially off-limits to all but park guards, is notorious among miners and rangers alike as a disorienting landscape of rainy bamboo forests tangled in vines.
I am not sure how long it will take me, but Im planning on doing 4 days in the jungle and a day to walk out. 5km a day is an abysmal pace, but it’s hard to keep a straightline without a horizon. Ill be bounded by a trail to the west and the coast everywhere else, so it should be difficult to get lost forever.
Those final two words would haunt me for years.
Twenty minutes later, at 9:26 AM, he sent a link to the map that he would carry with him. Ok, I found what seems to be the best map yet. Ive been looking at a variety of other maps with rivers and trails in different places, with different names. He described a new plan: Im going to try and follow the Rio Conte up, then head south to Rio Claro, which he would follow to the coast and out to Carate. Its supposed to be the rainy season, so I dont know how passable these hills are. You know how steep and slippery this kind of terrain can be.
Then, of the $3,436 in his bank account, he withdrew 50,000 colónes—about $95—from an ATM a few blocks from his hostel. Across the street at the supermarket, he bought five days of food for just over $25. He cooked his dinner in the hostel’s kitchen, then spread his gear on his dormitory bed and divided it among his small yellow duffel bag, his big Mexican backpack, and his new pack.
Into the yellow bag he put his Lonely Planet guidebook, a spiral notebook, beach supplies, and clothes. Into his big Mexican backpack, he stored his Kelty tent, sleeping bag, Jetboil stove, puffy jacket, and other warm clothes he had used for climbing volcanos; his flip-flops, blue jeans, and belt; plus other clothes and another notebook. For his five-day trip into Corcovado, Roman filled his new pack with cooking and camping gear, food, a machete, topo map, compass, sleep clothes, Visqueen tarp, and mosquito-net tent.
On the morning of July 10 at the Cabinas Corners, he paid $20 to the little old lady who ran the hostel for his two nights spent in the dormitory and another $10 to reserve a bed for his return. He left the big Mexican pack and yellow bag in storage. At around noon, he crossed the street and caught a colectivo for $5 to Dos Brazos, a small village twenty minutes from Puerto Jiménez and located on the mountainous edge of Corcovado National Park.
Roman wasn’t headed for the Rio Conte after all—but told no one his new plans.
Dos Brazos means “two arms” in Spanish, referring to the two arms, or forks, of the Rio Tigre that come together there. The village’s three hundred miners, subsistence farmers, and their families live in simple homes along two short gravel roads, one along each river arm. At the junction is a pulperia, one of many small wooden shacks with sheet metal roofs that are sprinkled across the Osa. They sell snacks, drinks, and newspapers. This one sometimes buys gold from local miners.
Early in the afternoon of July 10, Roman climbed out of a colectivo across from the pulperia, shouldered his pack, and headed alone up the right arm of the Rio Tigre—El Tigre—into the jungle of Corcovado.